


A Different Approach

by Narwhal7312



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, honestly fuck the canon, seriously AU, this does not have a happy ending, unfortunately he might have stolen it from Marinette, what if Adrien had a grown a spine actually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-06 10:27:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17938058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Narwhal7312/pseuds/Narwhal7312
Summary: What if Chloe was a more serious evil? What if Alya never got a reason to stand up for Marinette? What if Adrien was treated seriously as a character?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm posting this before I lose my nerve, honestly. I apologize for any typos and for my rather egregious tense shifts literally mid-scene. These are basically just the frameworks of two connected ideas that I would love to explore but honestly might never get around to.
> 
> It kind of started from what would happen if pre-Origins circumstances had been allowed to drag on a little bit longer, then all the what ifs above, and now I have these little bbys and I'm kind of curious to see what they might inspire in anyone else. Please don't be afraid to leave literally any thoughts in the comments.

At the beginning of the end, all Alya saw was Chloe leaning over Marinette to whisper something that made the girl pale. Marinette moved down to sit beside Nino, who murmured something quiet in return. Alya watched them, all clearly familiar with each other, everyone else paired off at the desks, and she felt a small pang of loneliness to be the new girl.

Later, Alya channeled her fire into what became her first big break as a journalist.

Later, Alya tried to stand up for Ivan like a hero would, and found herself with hot angry tears over the words of a spoiled brat. A brat who she was pretty sure was leaving bruises on that poor Marinette girl’s wrist. When the akuma burst out of the locker room, it was as much a relief as it was an “I told you so.” 

Later, Alya lost track of the next biggest scoop Paris had ever seen, and she had no one to rant to. Just the quiet whisper in her head telling her that Chloe might have been right.

When she sees Chloe launch herself at the blonde boy, sees him let her hang off his arm, she is prepared to hate him for that alone. She is not prepared for his quiet fury, for, “Chloe, how could you say that?” The way he asks Sabrina, in front of the whole class, if she would like him to take Chloe to sit with him in the back. 

When he slides into the seat beside her, some of that quiet fury still apparent, Alya says, “So, you’re friends with Chloe, huh?” But she’s teasing, she has her elbow on her knee and her hand of her head and she is looking at him sideways.

“I’m new,” he says, a subtle fire she can admire in his voice. He looks at her with determination. “I’m making a fresh start.”

A smile works its way across her face, and she says, “I’m new too. Us new kids ought to stick together, huh?”

“Yeah.” A smile is working its way across his face in return, and she might kind of be admiring how pretty his lips are and scolding herself in one thought, and then he notices her comic book and he is full on excited and she is lost, so lost. 

At least this is something that has her passion in return, and she can distract herself with the facts and the theories and ignore the way her heart flutters when he laughs at one of her puns and quips one back in return.

 

Adrien stepped out into the fresh air with a deep breath. It was fitting, that it would rain. It was like his past was being physically washed away. He brought out his umbrella, turned slightly as he opened it, and spotted a small girl looking at the rain with far more trepidation.

“Hey,” he murmured. She started, turned wide, terrified eyes on him, and he hastened to soothe. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” She settled, he pressed on. “I know, ah, we didn’t get off to the best start earlier. Maybe we could try again?”

“I’ve never seen anyone stand up to Chloe like that,” she breathed, voice full of an awe that made him shift uncomfortably.

“Really?” He wrinkled his nose, looked off into the middle distance. “That’s funny, because I never have either. It’s just that, well...” His hand comes up to rub the back of his neck. “After what Ladybug did yesterday, standing up to Hawkmoth, I felt inspired. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

“Oh.” Her gaze dropped to the ground. “It was pretty brave, huh?”

“Me or Ladybug?”

Her face is so adorable, flustered and pink, and she stammers out, “Y-you, I meant you! Not that Ladybug wasn’t, I mean, it must have been pretty scary--”

“You’re cute,” he says without thinking. Even as his free hand claps over his mouth and they both turn a new shade of red, he can’t really regret it.

“Anyway,” he clears his throat, but his ears are burning and he isn’t sure how to come back from that. He just thrusts his umbrella towards her. Their hands brush as she takes it, she looks up at him again with those huge eyes, and it feels like both of them are frozen in place while she pulls it back over herself.

The umbrella snaps shut over her head.

He can’t help it. A laugh bubbles out of him, bright and clear and safe from whatever was happening before, and she peeks out from underneath with a giggle of her own. When he can catch his breath, he manages a calm, “See you tomorrow.”

He hears, as he is about to open the car door, “See you tah, tomah, rah, row.”


	2. Marinette

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poor Marinette.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly did not expect so many positive responses overnight, wow. I feel like I should formally apologize for getting y'all hooked on a story that I really mean to get dark. But, it's not too bad yet, and given that my inspiration might run out I probably won't update the tags until I actually post something really bad. I swear, I love Marinette, I really do okay.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Chloe snapped.

Marinette froze, clutching at her purse strap, eyes anywhere but raised. “They told us to go home,” she tried, but her heart wasn’t in it.

“Nonsense.” Chloe gestured idly to the school security cameras, to the direction Stoneheart was raging. “Your house is right there, it’s not safe. You should come with me back to the hotel.”

Marinette didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified for a whole different reason. She shuffled her feet, managed, “But, my parents...”

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it,” Chloe said, that false sweet undertone taking over her voice. She held out a hand for Marinette’s and dialed her parents with the other, and they always cowed under Chloe, the mayor’s daughter... Well, Marinette always cowed too.

The thing was, she wasn’t sure anymore if being touch starved justified all of these touches.

She sits with the mayor’s daughter while a monster rampages across Paris. She gathers magazine clippings while colors flash across the screen. She keeps her full attention on the girl in front of her, always, always, knows to be half a second late with the appropriate reaction is nigh unforgivable, knows that the world could burn and Chloe’s hair would be more important.

Marinette tells herself that it’s alright. That Chloe needs her support with her mother gone and her father distracted by his job. She thinks she might not believe it anymore.

 

The next day at school, the world roils and upsets around her. Her parents tell her not to be scared, when Chloe drops her off in the morning, but Marinette saw the stone beings all over the city. The way their mouths were open in terror. The hollowness in their eyes. 

Worst of all, a tiny glowing being tells her it is her fault. Her fault, somehow, for not coming home. 

Marinette honestly cannot deal with that, especially not when the being tries to backtrack and its voice becomes cloying lies, so she snaps the box shut. Chloe walks her to school. Sabrina murmurs about the gossip of the day. She can deal with that. Normal.

Of course, normal is also Chloe waiting to say her piece to Ivan, Chloe catching her wrist so she can’t go after him, Chloe ready to put down the slightest challenge to her authority, Chloe who has never ceded in her life and is not about to start now no matter if she has just caused a literal monster to erupt from the locker room. Predictably, her first complaint is her hair.

Marinette is grateful, at least, that Chloe shoved her under the stairs beside Sabrina in the split second she had to act.

Marinette considers giving the earrings to her. Sabrina is clever and brilliant and maybe the person she trusts best in the whole world, next to Nino, but then she looks up at her with tear stained eyes. “Aren’t you going to do something?”

Her heart breaks.

Yes, she thinks. Someone has to. 

There is a monster breaking down the walls and Marinette has Sabrina’s hand in hers. She doesn’t dare call out to any of the others, can barely find it in herself to move at all. Sabrina whimpers, Marinette squeezes her hand, and they run and duck and weave across the street to the bakery, which is marginally safer for its old brick walls and her mama’s determination. 

The second time she sees the tiny pink creature, she doesn’t scream. Really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adrien is up next.


	3. Adrien

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adrien has always wanted to be a superhero, but does he deserve it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the answer is yes, but this fic is about suffering. Sorry not sorry.

Adrien wanted to be mad at the old man. He tried, even, but it wasn’t his fault and it wasn’t the universe’s and the true perpetrator was right there under his roof. He tried not to be mad at all, paced the full length of his room many times over, but the truth was inescapable.

The universe seemed to agree.

As soon as he dared that thought, the ground itself rumbled. Adrien was already on his feet and the rumbling wasn’t stopping, so he ran out of his room and down the stairs and threw open his front door.

There was a rock monster. A golem standing in front of his gate. When the police tried to shoot at it, it only glowed yellow and grew. They couldn’t seem to slow it down at all.  
His reeled back, spun on his heel and ran back up the stairs, into his room, vaulted over the back of the couch to click on his tv. The screen played the same images back at him. “A monster,” she said. “A monster, we’re trying to stop it--” and he was reeling and he was equal parts excited and terrified--

A little black box sat on his coffee table.

He was pretty sure it wasn’t there before, but no matter. This was a mystery he could handle. Something small.

He opened it.

A ball of light fluttered out, delicate but growing, until it was solid and black and he wondered how anything as paltry as delicate could possibly have applied to it. This... thing, whatever it was, seemed to blur out along the edges in a way that made his head hurt to pursue. It had ears, fangs almost like a cats. The huge eyes it turned towards him were a toxic green.

“Are you a genie?” Adrien breathed.

It was not, in fact, a genie. It was a kwami. The association with a cat only grew stronger and stronger with each passing moment, though, as it dove around the room in a chaotic path of destructive curiosity. He caught it in his hands, it slipped through them. Apparently kwamis could not be contained.

Apparently kwamis granted powers even better than genies.

“All you have to say is cataclysm, and you will destroy whatever you touch. If you say claws out, you’ll transform--”

“Got it. Cataclysm, claws out!”

“No, wait!” The kwami clutched at the roll of toilet paper it had found somewhere unfathomable. Behind his desk, probably. “I haven’t finished explaining!”

Adrien couldn’t wait, though. He would finally get to be a magical girl with his own transformation. Plagg was sucked into the ring, darkening it with the same rich black and a toxic green pawprint. The light flashed out, around him, while Adrien moved with it somehow, drawing power over him until it settled into his skin.

At the beginning of the end, all Adrien saw was a monster. His own mistakes. He was rash, he should have listened, he was destruction facing off against destruction and he didn’t know what to do. A reporter, red haired, had to tell him to stop hitting it, couldn’t he see that wasn’t working?

By some chance, divine fate, miracle, a purple soaked sheet of paper tumbled out of the monster’s clenched fist. Adrien destroyed it more by accident than anything, but it was enough. A butterfly just as dark fluttered away, and shadows fell off of the monster to reveal... a boy. A boy around his own age.

He didn’t have time to deal with that revelation, he could feel the power slipping away from him even if he didn’t know why, but the reporter managed to thrust her phone in his face while he fumbled with the baton. “What’s your name?” she demanded.

“Chat Noir.” He knew, as soon as he said it, that it was right. It sat warm behind his ribs.

Of course, his mistakes caught up to him. The little being had quite a lot to say about the fight. Things like, “take this seriously” and “listen” and, quiet, “you should have had a partner.” It seemed without them his only way to truly defeat these beasts was to save his power for the butterfly.

Adrien wasn’t sure he could manage it.

 

He tried to go to school. Again. The little beast didn’t understand, but that was okay, this was something he knew in his bones and the pulse of his heartbeat that he had to try. He ran as fast as he could.

He had only crossed the threshold when his mistakes erupted out of the wall. 

At least his reflexes were quick, small mercies, and his feet brought him around to a secluded corner and his mouth called his transformation before he had time to really think about it. It was his reflexes that got him into this mess, however. His impulses. He forced himself to slow, to think, to observe this time. It didn't make him feel better.

The akuma held his closest friend in all the world, his only friend, in one fist.

The red haired reporter, brave, foolish, beautiful, was back and getting herself into trouble again.

He let himself get caught up in the small picture, the mini monsters. She snapped him out of it. Yelled some more sense into him. And really, who was he to judge her taste for danger? He had been a thousand times worse than her yesterday. He wasn't sure trying to save the city was more honorable when the consequences were more grave. Her risks did not endanger the entire city, only herself.

He went to face the heart of all this trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Origins isn't over. I think the next chapter will be the hardest, since there's a lot more that I actually have to show for the fight. Or I might skip it. I don't know, I'm just trying to work my way towards the ending.

**Author's Note:**

> To any loyal readers out there, I will get back to A Golden Mistake. I promise. I just... don't know when.


End file.
